Joke

Today Joke informed me that she is leaving the group. The language barrier was too big.

And it's complete

I guess this would qualify as the beginning of my Pecan series.  I had the original 30 X 30 bits on my wall for what seemed like forever.  Just couldn't make up my mind about how I wanted to proceed with the background.  

Then I saw the opportunity to do a piece to enter in a competition that would end up as a street banner.  I played around with several ideas but none really excited me. The issue was largely the very vertical aspect of the required piece. The original  had to be w12" X h22".  Then if accepted, it would be blown up to twice that size for the banner. I had decided just to let this competition pass. Then like a flash of lightening it came to me...The Sapling!!  The Sapling is the name of the first piece in the Pecan series.  But to do it for the banner would afford me a smaller size to experiment with the background.  AND it is very vertical!!  It all came together so well that it was completed in one day!!

What I learned making this beginning piece has further inspired me to get onto the first of the series -- the REAL Sapling!

The Sapling - Banner

A photo of Main Street with the current banners

AND....it doesn't end there. During the summer, the original pieces will be displayed in Main Street businesses.  In the fall, they will be auctioned off to raise money for the Zumbrota Area Arts Council.

AND...one more thing....Wil has a piece accepted for a banner as well!! Wonder if we will be hanging on the same side of the street!  LOL!!

Winning collage - Jazz Medley

 

lll



my second piece

Another piece I made, practicing making collages and making a finished piece at the same time!  :-)

fabric collage

I made this collage with a drawing of my son Mathijs. I'd made a thermofaxscreen from the drawing and some of his early writing and printed them onto some monoprinted fabrics. With these fabrics I made a collage, adding some painted scrim. I layered it onto batting and a backing fabric and stitched horizontal lines to keep everything in place, and appliqued the print of the drawing.

Pages

I have added pages to the blog. This will give us the option to have all our work together on one page. Please post on the regular home page, but when you have done that please post a picture of your art work on your personal page as well.
To get there, click on design, pages, select your own page and add the picture there in the blogpost I have created for you all. Let me know if it is not clear.

Book/Box Secrets

I am translating this tutorial from Joke but as I have never folded one of those boxes I hope it is clear :-). Joke does not know whether this is the 'official' way of making a box like this. She once saw a picture of such a box and attempted to duplicate it.

The first picture shows a square piece of paper folded twice. Once from the left to the right and once from the top to the bottom. Those folds will remain visible. If you don't want that you can mark the folding lines with pencil. Open the paper till it is flat again. The folding lines are to aid you with the next step. Fold each part to the folding line. To help you these lines are marked in this picture. When you are making your real box you do not have to mark these.

Next you fold the corners of your paper to the centre like you see in this picture:

And folded open it looks like this:

Rotate the paper 90 degrees and fold it twice diagonal like this:

Turn the paper again in the original position with the tops like this and fold the corners like you see on the next 2 pictures:

Now the tricky part comes :-). Fold the corner marked with the arrow like you see on the picture above this text.

Do this clockwise with all the corners and your result is like the box which is shown in my bokk.

The other boxes are folded in the same way, only using rectangular paper instead of square and only the 2 opposite sides are folded inwards.
The big box is again a square one and folded in the similar way.
Good luck!